Blood of a Thousand Stars (Empress of a Thousand Skies #2)(9)

Empress Rhiannon was home.





THREE


KARA


KARA made her way up the staircase, taking two steps at a time as she dug the heel of her right palm into her eye socket to ease the building pressure. She hadn’t stopped moving since she’d taken off from the dojo, and she wouldn’t now. It was all about multitasking. Urge the blood vessels to relax, be patient. Force her body to push through. Fight. Get what’s yours, Aly would have said.

Aly. She’d lost him in the crowd. Rhiannon’s arrival back on Kalu had ignited something across the Kalusian territories. One second Aly was behind Kara and the next he was gone. If she had only waited, they wouldn’t be split up now. But if she had waited, the cylinder with the holo message wouldn’t be nestled in her pocket right now either. She hated how war had made everything split into either/or.

Please let him be here, she thought as she rushed up toward the roof.

Kara had been afraid Julian would follow her, so she had taken the long way back to Pavel. Returning had been its own kind of mission. The whole moon was protesting, and an explosive riot was the only reason she had made a clean getaway from the dojo. But on the way, she had seen Wraetans and Fontisians rounded up by the UniForce. It was illegal, since the moon was neutral—but that hadn’t stopped anyone, and Kara had done her best to be inconspicuous as she scanned the faces of the captured, some of them fearful, some furious, some in obvious shock.

She hadn’t seen Aly.

When Kara got to the topmost floor she saw the ladder had been pulled down. Her heart leapt. He was here. She scrambled up and popped her head through to see Pavel waiting for her. Just Pavel.

“Where is he?” Kara asked as she heaved her leg over and crawled onto the roof.

“I lost sight of him from the lookout. I hoped he would be accompanying you,” the droid said. His eyelights went red and his voice dropped. “It appears he is not . . .” His metal frame retracted into its compacted dome setting, like he had collapsed out of sadness onto the floor.

Kara knew how he felt. She was on her knees still, blinking into the setting sun, feeling the ache behind her eyes sink deeper and deeper into her skull. She trembled out of fear and frustration—and suddenly the heat, the anger, felt overwhelming, intense, like she’d burst into flame from the inside out. It was that same panicked feeling she’d gotten when she came home to her house ransacked, and Lydia gone. That hadn’t ended well.

“They took him,” she said. “They must have.”

Pavel didn’t answer. He rolled toward her in his dome shape and nudged her shoulder gently. It made her feel a fraction better, a little less alone. But when his faceplate rotated toward her, she caught a glimpse of herself reflected back in its sheen. Her eyes were green.

They’re changing color again, Aly had said.

Kara had to let it be; she wouldn’t be able to manage the sting of those eye drops with her headache this bad.

She angled her face to the left. Was her face changing? And how long before anyone might guess who she really was: the lost princess, Josselyn Ta’an?

The possibility felt unreal, like a bad hologram that stuttered, a fractured projection—the same moment in low fidelity, looped over and over again. It was enough to drive a person crazy. But how could you reconcile these two identities—the city girl with the never-ending con, and the resurrected princess? But wasn’t that the dream? Being royalty, putting on the red dress, the centerpiece in a parade while millions watched on? Maybe so—but the thought made Kara recoil.

“You have a DNA cipher,” Pavel said.

“That’s what it is?” Kara reached into her pocket and produced the wooden cylinder she’d taken from Julian. Aly would have been fascinated. He would’ve taken it apart and rearranged it, and she would have watched the fine movements of his hands—easing pieces in and out of place as he bit his lower lip, theorizing where it had been made and who could have sent it.

“It’s responsive to your fingertips alone. I detect sample cells that match yours embedded in the fiber of the wood.”

“That’s . . . kind of gross. But kind of cool.” It sounded like something Lydia would have loved—had she left this for her, or had the Lancer? Excitement shot through her again at the thought that this message was made for her, and her alone.

She placed it on the floor in front of her and that same blue beam emitted, producing a holo of the galaxy. The Outer Belt edged out of the frame. As she stood there on the roof staring at the image, Kara felt like she was practically flying, headed toward the Desuco Quadrant, past Tinoppa and Naidoz and finally the tiny dwarf planet called Ralire. She watched as the holo zeroed in, past the atmosphere, farther, farther, until she could see topography and finally an aerial view of a city. Then the words unfurled across the skyline.

The past is gone, but the future you seek is here: 678.900.05.

“Those coordinates are on Ralire.” Pavel emitted a red pointer beam and circled a section on the northern hemisphere of the dwarf planet. “Twelfth celestial body from the sun. I don’t comprehend how you can seek your future there.”

“It’s not literal,” Kara said. If the message was only for her, then it was referring to her past—her past as Josselyn Ta’an, the one that Lydia had taken away. It had to be. Which meant . . . “I think this is talking about the overwriter.”